Mayor Mick Ireland had seen enough traffic scofflaws, the lead foots and stop-sign runners. On leisurely patrols atop his bike, the top official in Aspen, Colo., had watched countless motorists cut through the Rocky Mountain resort town's West End to avoid congestion along nearby Highway 82. Every time traffic slows along the city's main thoroughfare, cars whiz out of traffic and onto the residential streets, rushing through a series of stop signs...

Texas has approved the nation's fastest speed limit -- 85 miles per hour -- about the speed associated with the winds in a Category 1 hurricane. The move by the Texas Transportation Commission on Aug. 30 had been expected since the state Legislature last year approved the 85 mph limit for stretches of new road. A transportation department spokesman told the Associated Press that the commissioners would not comment on their decision. Many U.S. highways have limits of 75 miles an hour, though some roads go as high as 80 miles an hour.

Justin Bieber - maniac? Bieber was pulled over on the 101 Freeway on Friday and cited for driving in a "reckless manner" and going faster than the speed limit, the CHP told L.A. Now , but one man who witnessed the action told the story a bit more dramatically. That'd be L.A. City Councilman Dennis Zine, who told TMZ he was driving to work in downtown L.A. when he saw the chrome Fisker Karma weaving in and out of lighter-than-usual traffic with a trail of other cars in pursuit, some of them even driving on the shoulder during the incident.

WASHINGTON -- Everything is bigger in Texas, they say. Soon, it could be faster, too. The Lone Star State could raise the speed limit on one stretch of highway to 85 miles per hour, the highest in the nation. But don't press the pedal to the metal yet. The possibility of zooming down a 41-mile stretch of new toll road between Austin and San Antonio at 85 mph is revving up a debate about highway speeds that dates back at least to the 1970s when Congress imposed a national 55 mph speed limit (repealed in 1995)

The Los Angeles City Council voted Wednesday to seek a speed limit for skateboarders and penalize them for failing to follow a range of traffic rules, from stopping at stop signs to yielding to pedestrians. On a 12 to 0 vote, the council instructed City Atty. Carmen Trutanich to draft an ordinance that would prohibit "unsafe" skateboard activity and limit riders to a speed of 25 mph. The proposal was initiated by Councilman Joe Buscaino, who described it as a response to the death of two skateboarders over the last year.

The road through Hopewell, Va., isn't exactly paved with gold, but a mile-and-a-half stretch of interstate generated $2-million worth of speeding tickets for the town last year - and a fight between the AAA and the local sheriff. AAA Mid-Atlantic, decrying "heavy-handed traffic enforcement tactics," said the 14,000 tickets written last year for a stretch of Interstate 295 through the town "appears to be about more than safety. " The speed limit is 70 mph. Sheriff Greg Anderson said officers won't write up tickets until a driver is going a minimum of 81 miles an hour.

I wasn't surprised Andrew Bynum was ticketed for speeding Wednesday. Obviously he had just heard he was the subject on Page 2 and was rushing to buy The Times. Nice to see one young person still reads the paper. I had written about the need for Bynum to report back to work as a grownup after his four-game suspension. Obviously I'm not clairvoyant. PHOTOS: Lakers vs. Knicks I was unaware he had been stopped by the police a day earlier as well and given a "fix-it" ticket for improperly functioning taillights and having no license plates.

An accident magnet Re " Crash death hits neighborhood hard ," Aug. 28 I have been commuting on L.A. freeways for 30 years, the last seven on the 110 between downtown and Pasadena, and it was no surprise to me to read of the tragic collision that took the life of a little girl. That stretch of the 110 is an accident magnet because of the high speeds of most drivers and the blind curves. And with only three lanes, even fender benders cause significant backups in traffic.

If a tree falls in the woods, does it make a sound? More to the point, if you roll past a stop sign in the woods and nobody is there to see it, do you get a ticket? You do if you're in one of the three Santa Monica Mountains parks overseen by the Mountains Recreation and Conservation Authority where stop-sign scofflaws are on candid camera. The authority has set traps for unsuspecting motorists by installing video cameras at stop signs and mailing citations to those who fail to come to a complete halt.

Who would take a road trip when gasoline is hovering near $4 a gallon? Well, you might, especially if you're taking the family. Sometimes it's cheaper to drive. "Driving makes sense if you have three people traveling, heavy baggage or fragile sporting equipment," said George Hobica, founder of Airfarewatchdog.com , an airfare deals blog. Baggage fees, which put almost $3.4 billion into airlines' coffers last year, can cost as much as $35 a bag (Allegiant, paid at the airport)